Marxian Hermeneutics and Heideggerian Social Theory:

Interpreting and Transforming Our World

Gerry Stahl

a dissertation

submitted to the Graduate School

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Northwestern University

Evanston, Illinois

June 1975

The original typewritten version is available at Northwestern University:

Diss

378

N.U.

1975

5781m

It is indexed in Dissertation Abstracts and available from University Microfilms

The electronic version was created on the 25^th anniversary of the document. Changes were limited to minor stylistic improvements and the graphics. Digital copies are available in html and pdf format at: http://GerryStahl.net/publications/dissertations/philosophy

Gerry Stahl

Abstract

Marxian Hermeneutics and Heideggerian Social Theory:

Interpreting and Transforming Our World

gerry stahl,

northwestern university

june 1975

Today neither philosophy of interpretation (hermeneutics) nor philosophy of society can legitimately proceed without the other. Interpretation of the world precedes the possibility of transforming it, according to Martin Heidegger, because the presence of beings is always already meaningfully structured. For Karl Marx, however, interpretations of the world are constituted by human praxis, the reproduction and transformation of social reality. The confrontation of Marx’s thought with Heidegger’s provides an appropriate historical medium for the indispensable task of bringing the problematics of critical social theory and philosophical hermeneutics to bear upon each other.

The alternative notions, that hermeneutics either founds or is founded upon social analysis, are reconciled by interpreting Marx’s social methodology as being in accord with hermeneutic principles and by transforming Heidegger’s ontology to take account of social mediations. Thereby, Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics clarifies Marx’s methodological sophistication, rescuing Marxism from a history of mechanistic corruptions, while Marx’s insights into the power of social relations provide a corrective to the politically reactionary self-understanding, abstract form, scholastic structure and non-social content of Heidegger’s jargon.

Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism plays a role analogous to Heidegger’s theory of the oblivion or Being. In both systems, the distorted appearance of things is related to the prevailing form of the Being of beings: their commodity form for Marx or their technological character for Heidegger. The commodity form of products and of human productive labor prevails in the bourgeois or capitalist era. Marx, whose methodology is specific to an analysis of this period, traces the historical and structural development of these commodity relations in primarily socio-economic terms. The way in which changes in the over-all social character are thereby related to concrete interactions provides the guiding theme of the Marx interpretation, which forms Part II.

Where Marx relates the technological character of the commodity to its actual, concrete, everyday exchange in the marketplace as historically developed, Heidegger insists that the process by which, e.g., the technological character of beings has been given, the “Ereignis,” is ungrounded and incomprehensible. But such an insistence ignores the proper position of the Ereignis within Heidegger’s system: as the process of self-mediation and of totalization of all that which is present, The analogy between the role of the social character in Marx’s system and that of the Ereignis in Heidegger’s is drawn in the opening and closing remarks of Part III, the Heidegger interpretation. There it is argued that Heidegger’s alternative conceptualization weakens Marx’s sense of the historical limits of theory as well as foregoing all ability to comprehend transformations of Being or society concretely.

Considering Heidegger and Marx together suggests that Heidegger’s central fault is in failing to relate changes in Being –- the historically prevalent form of presence of beings –- to developments within the concrete social realm of entities. Changes of ontological interpretation can, as Marx demonstrates, be comprehended in terms of transformations within society, whereby, of course, the social theory must itself be hermeneutically appropriate.

Marxian Hermeneutics and Heideggerian Social Theory:

Interpreting and Transforming Our World

Man müsse durch die Eiswüste der Abstraktion hindurch, um zu konkretem Philosophieren bündig zu gelangen.

– Adorno quoting Benjamin

Preface

Thinking about Marx and Heidegger together is most fruitfully accomplished by a sympathetic study of their mature approaches and systems, focusing on the relation between beings and Being, the concrete and the abstract, the individual entity and its socio-historical context. This strategy determines the selection of texts to be analyzed. Rather than centering on accidentally parallel discussions of explicitly political issues, writings are chosen with the goal of developing the most important systematic and methodological themes of Marx’s and Heidegger’s thought. Their mature presentations –- Volume I of Das Kapital (1867) and the lecture on Time and Being (1962) –- are taken as standards, with other works drawn upon to trace the developments leading up to them. Hermeneutic, political and internal justifications for the selection of specific primary texts, for not making explicit use of secondary works, and for interpreting the two philosophers through each others’ eyes are indicated in the introductory Part I. Above all, it is argued, a contemporary perspective on Marx is inevitably affected by Heidegger’s influence as well as by intervening political developments; and similarly for reading Heidegger.

While less central points of direct contact between the writings of Marx and those of Heidegger have been ignored, several correspondences have been thematized. A primary motivating presupposition of both Marx’s and Heidegger’s project is the belief that true reality lies hidden from our direct perceptions. Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism plays a role analogous to Heidegger’s theory of the oblivion or Being. In both systems, the distorted appearance of things is related to the prevailing form of the Being of beings: their commodity form for Marx or their technological character for Heidegger. Heidegger’s “technological stock” has essentially the same characteristics as Marx’s “commodity.” Both forms are, furthermore, historically specific. Technological stock is the characteristic form of the Being of beings in the modern epoch, which is, according to Heidegger, historically given by Being-as-such or the Ereignis. Correspondingly, for Marx, the commodity form of products and of human productive labor prevails in the bourgeois or capitalist era. Marx, whose methodology is specific to an analysis of this period, traces the historical and structural development of these commodity relations in primarily socio-economic terms. The way in which changes in the over-all social character are thereby related to concrete interactions provides the guiding theme of the Marx interpretation, which forms Part II.

Where Marx relates the technological character of the commodity to its actual, concrete, everyday exchange in the marketplace as historically developed, Heidegger insists that the process by which, e.g., the technological character of beings has been given, the “Ereignis,” is ungrounded and incomprehensible. But such an insistence ignores the proper position of the Ereignis within Heidegger’s system: as the process of self-mediation and of totalization of all that which is present. To divorce mediation from its content is hypostatization; to project social totalization beyond its socio-historical limits is to fall behind Marx’s level of methodological self-reflection. The analogy between the role of the social character in Marx’s system and that of the Ereignis in Heidegger’s is drawn in the opening and closing remarks of Part III, the Heidegger interpretation. There it is argued that Heidegger’s alternative conceptualization weakens Marx’s sense of the historical limits of theory as well as foregoing all ability to comprehend transformations of Being or society concretely.

***

The methodological reflections on thinking about Marx and Heidegger together, the interpretation of Marx, and the analysis of Heidegger are each carried out in three chapters, as summarized below:

The dialectic of essence and appearance at work in the systems of both Marx and Heidegger represents a shared response to present social appearances as obscuring the potential for a better world, one which would incorporate new forms of ontological relations (Part I). But the two mainstreams of contemporary continental thought which flow from these systems, and which appeal especially to those interested in transforming the world, problematize each other. Issues both internal and external to Marx’s theory and Heidegger’s thought call for a reckoning by each with the other (Chapter I). Heidegger, for instance, accuses Marxism of adopting “metaphysical” conceptualizations (Chapter II), while Marxists respond that Heidegger has ignored the impact of social conditions upon his thought (Chapter III).

Marx’s works are construed as interpretations of the social relations underlying appearances which have been distorted by capitalist relations (Part II). His early writings, Alienated Labor and Theses on Feuerbach, anticipations of his mature critique of political economy, occasionally substitute the critical appropriation of prevalent metaphysical hypotheses for the stringent methodology subsequently used (Chapter IV). Marx’s Grundrisse then develops the appropriate historical analyses, economic categories and hermeneutic methodology though theoretical research (Chapter V). Finally, Capital systematically presents the analysis of capitalist society, starting dialectically from the abstractions arrived at in the capitalist economy (Chapter VI). The hermeneutic accord between Marx’s interpretations of the world and the historic processes which reproduce and transform the world, the manifold unity of Marx’s social theory and capitalist social practice, saves Marx’s system from the charge of being metaphysical by deriving its method from its object.

Heidegger’s post-war thought offers an alternative to Marxism by focusing on the general, non-economic relationship between entities and their form of presence in a given historical epoch (Part III). The Origin of the Work of Art presents Heidegger’s “reversal” toward Being-as-such, formulating his central question of Being in terms of the origin of the historically specific form of presence of a work which establishes its own presence (Chapter VII). The tendency here to give an absolute priority to Being develops in the essay The Thing, which introduces his mature theoretical framework. (Chapter VIII). Heidegger’s final statement, the lecture on Time and Being, takes a meta-ontological overview of the history of the forms of presence which, however, leaves the concrete details of historical ontological transformations shrouded in mystery (Chapter IX). Thereby, the ontological self-interpretation of the world is illegitimately divorced from its ontic self-transformation, leaving Heidegger’s social commentary content-less and messianic next to Marx’s.

***

Note: Chapter III is copywritten by the journal in which it appeared as “The Jargon of Authenticity: An Introduction to a Marxist Critique of Heidegger” by Gerry Stahl (Boundary II, Department of English, SUNY-Binghamton, NY 13901, Winter 1975, pp. 439-497).

Quotations: All quotations are given in English. Translations from the German are based upon the best available English versions, but are revised without notice for increased literalness and consistency. References to texts of Marx and Heidegger are given to both the translation and the original, with English page numbers preceded by p and German by S.

***

The present work represents the culmination or thirty years of progress toward the author’s intellectual maturity. As such, it is a token of gratitude to all those who have contributed, however unknowingly, to that process. It is, accordingly, dedicated to those magical moments when truth makes its appearance unannounced, but deservedly, within a social gathering.

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